In the November Spending Review Chancellor George Osborne announced confirmation of funding for the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) will continue through to at least 2020/21, as the government battles to improve its performance on low-carbon heat in time to meet its legally binding 2020 renewables targets. Yesterday the government released more detail on its plans to reform the RHI, in a bid to expand the rollout of a wider range of low-carbon technologies, and widen access to the scheme among smaller households. Key changes to the Domestic RHI include the introduction of “heat demand limits” to prevent larger homes claiming too much of the budget, new rules allowing households to reassign their right to RHI payments to companies that have installed low-carbon technology, and higher tariff rates for heat pumps. Meanwhile, changes to the non-domestic RHI include moving all non-domestic biomass boilers to a single tariff, the removal or limiting of support for biogas that uses crop-based feedstock, and the introduction of ‘tariff guarantees’ for heat pumps and large combined heat and power biomass sites. Notably, under both the domestic and non-domestic systems, support for solar thermal would be removed from 2017.
Business Green 4th March 2016 read more »
Solar panels which use the sun to heat water will no longer receive subsidies under plans unveiled by the government. The industry has reacted furiously to the move to do away with support for new solar thermal schemes from next year under the renewable heat incentive (RHI), which aims to boost the use of clean technology to provide heating and hot water. It comes as the parliamentary energy and climate change committee warned that a series of changes already made to the government’s energy policy had “spooked” investors and could push up consumer bills by increasing the cost of new energy schemes. In the consultation, the government said solar thermal was paid the highest level of subsidies among the technologies in the RHI and that when questioned, half of those who had installed a unit said they would have put it in even without the payments.
Guardian 4th March 2016 read more »